As a songwriter, I’m always looking for ways to shake up my creative process. I know that if I rely on the same familiar themes and musical ideas, my songs will start to sound predictable. One of my favorite songwriting exercises is to start a song with a random word or phrase .
And my favorite source for random prompts is a website called Watch Out for Snakes. It’s a great tool for generating all sorts of random content, from words and phrases to entire lists. While I don't always love what it gives me, it's a good way to get my brain working in new directions. This time, I decided to generate a random sentence.
I didn't super like what I got, but I liked the word “mathematician”. And so as I was thinking about things, I started thinking about someone who's trying to math their way through love. I imagined someone trying to apply logic and reason to something as messy and unpredictable as love, and I thought there was something interesting there.
So I took that random phrase and entered it into a new sample pack generator that Output has.
Usually you would type things like “trance beat at 100 bpm” or “happy piano solo in the key of D”, you know, something like that, something a little more musically descriptive. But I thought it would be fun to just try this nonsense phrase and see what sample packs it would generate for me.
Once I listened through a few of the ideas, I really dug it. Sort of this melancholy piano part that completely fit the concept that I was going for. With the piano sample as my foundation, I started building the song in Logic Pro. I chopped up the sample, rearranged some of the pieces, and added some of my own piano playing to reinforce the bassline and modify the phrasing a bit.
At this point, I started hearing a bit of a melody in my head, this little idea, and I thought, what could that be? So first I wrote, “sometimes it doesn't add up”. Thinking I would try to use as many math puns as I could, but I ended up changing it to “It's true, it doesn't add up”.
I wanted to add some other instrumentation to the track, so I explored the other samples in the pack. I brought in some flute and a little bit of strings. The strings ended up being a bit too overpowering, so I turned them down in the mix. I also found a really cool acoustic guitar part in the pack that I liked, but it didn't quite fit with the first section of the song. I decided to add it in as a separate section, and this decision ended up changing the entire direction of the song.
The addition of the acoustic guitar created a natural division in the song. The first part, with the piano and the more subdued melody, felt like an intro. The second section, with the acoustic guitar, took on a faster, more rhythmic feel.
I love working this way because it forces me to think differently about songwriting. I wouldn't have come up with this particular song, with its unique concept, instrumentation, and structure, if I had relied solely on my usual methods.
This experience has reinforced the importance of experimentation and play in the creative process. Sometimes, the best way to overcome a creative block is to simply try something new and see where it leads you. Even if you don’t end up with a finished product, the process of exploration can be incredibly rewarding. It can teach you new things about your craft and open up new creative pathways that you might not have discovered otherwise.